


"Black"

by oldmythologies



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Remix, Suicide Squad AU, and how they got there, my babies gone violent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 07:52:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12228687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldmythologies/pseuds/oldmythologies
Summary: None of the paladins had an easy life. Black falls first. Down in the pits, he picks up Green, Yellow, and finally Blue.A remix of pastel-clark's "Ain't No God Where We're From, Darling" for the VLD FanFic Remix.





	"Black"

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Ain't No God Where We're From, Darling](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8551756) by [PastelClark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelClark/pseuds/PastelClark). 



> In this remix, I took PastelClark's amazing backstories from their suicide squad AU and showed them, except Shiro didn't climb out of his captivity as a well adjusted soldier. He falls just like the rest of them. PastelClark, I hope you enjoy!

Shiro didn’t know the last time he’d heard a word in English, or Japanese, or anything other than the grating Galran tongue. When he’d first gotten there, when he was young, and optimistic, when he had wanted to make the best out of being a fucking prisoner of war torture toy, he’d try to learn it. He’d aged ten years in the time he’d been with them, and at some point he started to block it out. He knew the basics, of course. Classic phrases like “move, rat,” and, “die, human scum,” and “I’m going to kill you.” He’d started getting into the second semester of Galran lately, with phrases like “I’ll rip out your spine,” and “I wonder what humans taste like.”

He learned how to grin like they did, sharpened teeth shining in the broken strips of light, the little seeds of hope that the commander let shine down into the pits. It was just enough daylight to keep them fighting.

He learned the phrases that they’d shout down at him and whatever traitor or unlucky human they threw down with him. “Crush his skull,” and “don’t let ‘em live, champ!” and a whole list of things that the soldiers wanted to do to him. It wasn’t a list to be repeated in good company. Shiro didn’t know the last time he’d been in good company.

He learned the colors. His blood was “red,” their skin was “purple,” their blood was “black,” a disgusting ichor that looked all too much like oil. It was hard to differentiate them from machines, not when they bled like that. It was better, to think of everyone else as machines. Easier.

He learned to count. One lash, “one.” Another crack, and then “two.” He tried not to scream, “three.” He felt the blood drip down his bare ass, the red mixing in with the dirt, “four.” They didn’t usually stop until somewhere around “twenty.”

When Shiro made his escape, god knows how long into his captivity, he made sure to use all of his lessons.

“I’m going to kill you,” he told the first guard. The color of his blood was “black.”

“Two,” he shook when the next guard fell. He kept counting.

“Twenty,” he spoke, dripping stolen blade clutched in his wet hand, his sweat forcing his grasp tighter and tighter. He wish he’d been left-handed, before. It would have made this a whole lot easier. He stood before an iron door. He wiped the blood, “black,” out of his eyes.

_Get Matt and Sam, get home_ , he thought, in English.

He opened the door.

Blood fell to the ground, loud on the concrete.

“Red.”

The commander gave him a smile, just like the one Shiro learned in the pits. There was no light in this room. Their eyes were already glassy.

Shiro roared

Weeks later, when Project Altea found the base, they dug up the bodies of dozens of Galra soldiers, their mutilated commander, and two humans, delicately laid next to each other with hands folded over their chest, eyes closed.

* * *

Katie Holt didn’t know who sent her the list of names, who gave her eerie descriptions of how the Galra smiled as they cut up her brother, her dad, her family. She didn’t know who dropped that first stack of hundred dollar bills in her backpack, who whispered in her ear, “they’re dead and they were killed by monsters, the monsters that left them to rot, those humans left them, and those are the monsters, monsters monsters monsters and they’re still out there.”

Soon the whispers weren’t in her head. They were in her mouth, drying out her tongue and her eyes as they went glassy in the blue glow from her screens.

She used that first stack of hundreds to build a computer or four, her first nanobots. She used that computer to pull funds from the organization that destroyed her family, the organization that left her brother and her dad to rot in some pit. She used the nanobots to follow the men home, to learn what they loved, and to take it from them. They had destroyed her. They didn’t deserve families, not after what they’d done.

That computer taught her exactly how to kill them. She built machines, she built drones, and she took them. She took every person on that list of names.

She liked to start by taking off their skin.

* * *

Hunk liked to count. It helped calm him down He counted toothpicks, noodles, how many beans in a bowl of soup. He counted hours.

Thirty nine.

Thirty nine hours. When he counted toothpicks and noodles and beans in a bowl of soup, he always skipped thirty nine. Thirty eight, thirty eight, forty.

Now, he was counting seconds. Stuck in the doorway, watching the shadows on the toppled chair swing, he counted the seconds.

He counted his footsteps, shifting, pounding into the sand beneath his feet. He tried to count his breaths, but it was too much. That was too many things to count all at once and he couldn’t, he couldn’t hold it all in his head, not when he was still trying to count the seconds since he’d found his dead sister, trying to count his footsteps aways from her marble eyes. He couldn’t think, not when he was still trying to forget their smiles as they cut her up, when they touched her and—

Thirty eight, thirty eight, forty.

He sat down, letting the dust settle into his skin.

He was still counting when he felt someone sit down next to him.

* * *

Lance’s knees shook. He knew what to do; they’d made sure he knew what to do. He knew how to take people apart; they’d done it to him often enough that he knew exactly what it felt like and how it worked.

They’d shown most of his family the exact same art. Most of the time, the Galra didn’t bother putting them back together.

Lucky them.

When they put Lance back together, they showed him all kinds of other arts.

The gun was familiar in his hands, but his knees still shook. He was hungry.

The thought hit, frigid.

He was hungry; they hadn’t properly fed hm in days.

He had a gun in his hand. The commander was standing in front of him. They hadn’t fed him. They never fed him enough. They never fed his sisters enough. He had a little brother, once. They hadn’t fed him either.

His gun raised without his hands moving it. The commander was right in front of him.

He felt the ground raise up to meet the ship, grumbling under his feet. He didn’t remember the last time he’d been on the ground. He couldn’t remember what the dirt smelled like. It’d been so long since he was allowed to speak about anything outside of… art.

He didn’t know if he had the words to describe the smell of dirt anymore.

He was so hungry.

His finger was steady over the trigger.

Black blood crashed against the side of his face.

He heard broken Galran, spoken more softly than he thought was possible in the language. It didn’t grate like it usually did. He recognized the word.

“One.”

The commander reacted as the blood hit him too.

Lance pulled the trigger. He spoke the next word.

“Two.” He spoke in English.

The ships filled with a pool of shallow black blood. The door lowered in front of him and it oozed out onto the dirt.

Someone walked up next to him. He didn’t bother to turn and look at him, not when the Earth was right there, he could almost smell it.

The man followed Lance out. Lance dropped his gun and fell into the Earth, digging his sticky fingers into the dirt.

The man sat down next to him.

“How would you like to help me fix the world.”

Lance finally looked up. The man grinned, feral. The smile was just like theirs. Lance knew that smile. He reflected it.

“Any means necessary,” he spoke again.

Lance nodded. “Please.”


End file.
